Category
Curiosities
47 articles
Ecuador's Año Viejo: The Myth and the Real History
Everyone repeats that Ecuador's Año Viejo burning began in an 1895 epidemic. The historical evidence tells a different, more curious story of the tradition.
Knock on Wood: The Real Origin of the Superstition
Almost everyone thinks knocking on wood comes from Celtic tree worship. But the documented trail leads to a far more recent origin: a children's game.
The Year Without a Summer of 1816
In 1815 Mount Tambora erupted and darkened the planet. 1816 became the year without a summer: failed crops, famine and the birth of Frankenstein.
Poyais: The Country That Never Existed
Gregor MacGregor invented a Central American country, Poyais, and sold bonds and land to hundreds of Britons who sailed off to a nation that never existed.
The Baroness of Galápagos and the Floreana Mystery
In the 1930s, an Austrian baroness tried to rule over Floreana island in the Galápagos. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
The Origin of “Chuchaqui”, the Ecuadorian Hangover
“Chuchaqui” is the hangover the Ecuadorian way, a word almost nobody understands across the border. Its origin lies in Quichua and the coca leaf.
Stockholm Syndrome Was Born to Silence a Hostage
The famous syndrome didn't come from a study: the police's own psychiatrist coined it to discredit a hostage who criticized him. It isn't in the DSM.
Procrastination: The Vice That Infuriated the Romans Who Coined the Word
Procrastination comes from the Latin «cras», tomorrow. Hesiod scolded procrastinators 2,700 years ago and Cicero declared it hateful. We're not the first.
Asimov: The Man Who Wrote About Everything (Literally)
Isaac Asimov published some 500 books: science fiction, yes, but also history, chemistry, Shakespeare, the Bible and even humor. This is his story.
Serendipity: The Word Born in a Letter From 1754
Few words have an exact birth certificate. Serendipity was born on January 28th, 1754, in a private letter — and its root is the old name of Sri Lanka.
The Doctor Who Toasted With Bacteria and Won a Nobel
Nobody believed a bacterium caused ulcers. Fed up, Barry Marshall drank a culture of it, made himself sick on purpose, and changed medicine.
Spam: The First Junk Email in History
On May 3rd, 1978, a salesman sent the first unsolicited mass email to 400 people. That we call it “spam” is the fault of a can of ham.
“Bizarro” Doesn't Mean What You Think
For centuries, the Spanish word “bizarro” meant brave and gallant. How a false friend stole a word's meaning — and how the dictionary surrendered.
The Fifth Sleep: when we slept in two shifts
For centuries we did not sleep eight hours straight, but in two sleeps with a waking hour in between. The history of segmented sleep, from Cervantes to science.
The Man Who Has Edited a Third of Wikipedia
Steven Pruitt has made nearly 7 million Wikipedia edits without earning a cent. The story of the most generous obsession on the internet.
The Origin of the Word “Petrichor”
The smell of rain has had a name since 1964: petrichor, “the blood of the gods flowing from stone”. This is its story — and its science.
The Giant Stones of Yap and What Money Really Is
On a tiny Pacific island, money was made of giant stones — some so heavy they never moved, and one of them sat at the bottom of the sea.
The Car That Runs on Firewood: Old Technology Cuba Is Reviving Out of Necessity
A Cuban mechanic runs his Fiat on charcoal, reviving the century-old gasifier that powered half a million cars in WWII, now reborn out of necessity.
Fiction or Prophecy? 20 Cartoons and Films That Predicted Our Present
From the Jetsons to Blade Runner, 20 cartoons and films predicted smartwatches, video calls and AI decades before they became part of daily life.
Everest Is NOT the World's Tallest Mountain!
First, let's be clear: Mount Everest is the world's tallest mountain—as long as you measure from sea level, which has been the custom.
Who stole Einstein's brain and then walked it around in the trunk of his car?
When Einstein died he asked to be cremated and forgotten, but the pathologist stole his brain and drove it around in his trunk for decades.
The History of Smiling in Photographs: From the Mona Lisa to Digital Cameras
Why nobody smiled in old photographs: a journey from long exposures and the Mona Lisa's enigma to the digital cameras that made grinning effortless.
Punta de Piedras and the Oyster Sauté
A pirate-era fort in the Guayas delta and a forgotten oyster sauté that once tempted river travelers, rediscovered through old chronicles and photos.
Tuvalu: The Archipelago That Sold Its Stamps
A tiny Polynesian nation with no exports got rich selling postage stamps to collectors, until greed and fake printing errors flooded the market.
The last purple on the planet
Tyrian purple, the dye drawn from thousands of sea snails, was so coveted it defined emperors, then vanished when its secret was lost forever.
The Volcano of San Vicente
A tiny mud volcano once spat geysers of salty water on Ecuador's coast, and forgotten 19th-century writings reveal the wild site before tourism erased it.
Are We Raising an Overstimulated Generation?
Are we raising an overstimulated generation? A look back at childhoods full of empty hours, boredom, and the lost art of inventing your own fun.
Retro Tech Vintage Computer Club
How a nostalgic urge to restore an old Atari 2600 grew into a vintage computer club that fascinates collectors and teenagers alike.
The old Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 laptop
The Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 had speed, price, and a 200-hour battery, yet one fatal design flaw doomed it and ended an era for the company.
The First Laptop in History: EPSON HX-20.
Review of the first laptop in history, invented by EPSON. It had a printer included and a battery that gave it incredible autonomy.
Hidden details in the photograph of a Guayaquil tram
A century-old photo of a Guayaquil tram hides clues that reveal its exact corner, its Belgian car and a surprising link to a famous soccer club.
Medardo Ángel Silva and Pavlova's Dance
Anna Pavlova's Dying Swan so moved poet Medardo Ángel Silva in 1917 Guayaquil that he wrote his celebrated poem from behind the curtains.
When We Brushed Our Teeth with Radioactive Toothpaste and Drank Coca-Cola with Cocaine
From radioactive toothpaste to cocaine-laced Coca-Cola and leaded gas, history is full of everyday products that quietly poisoned us all.
The miraculous malaria cure that became a gin and tonic
The malaria cure born from Andean cinchona bark became quinine, then tonic water, and finally the gin and tonic we still raise in our glasses.
The Men Who Carried Cuenca's Light on Their Shoulders
Electric light, the first car and even a protest jeep all reached Cuenca carried on human shoulders. The most epic isolation story in the Andes.
The strange parties to inhale anesthesia of the early 19th century
Nitrous oxide was one of the first effective anesthetics discovered, but it did not always have that important use.
The Voice of the last Castrato. The only known recording of the famous singer Alessandro Moreschi.
Boys were castrated for centuries to keep their angelic voices, and one chilling recording lets you hear the very last of them sing before he died.
Looking for the lost Eiffel bridge in Ecuador
A forgotten Eiffel bridge built in Ecuador in 1886 sparks a real-life hunt to find whether the lost railway structure still survives today.
The almost unknown bet that changed the history of humanity.
A 40-shilling bet between Halley, Hooke and Wren one winter night in 1684 pushed a reclusive Newton to unveil gravity and change history forever.
The most numerous animals on the planet are also the least known. The infamous case of krill and springtails.
The most numerous animals on Earth aren't ants or mosquitoes but krill and springtails, tiny creatures that quietly hold the food chain together.
The dance plague of 1518, the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the tarantulas
In 1518 Strasbourg, dozens danced themselves to death in a plague no one can explain, a mystery tangled with tarantulas and the Piper of Hamelin.
Mysteriously endless experiments. Can they work indefinitely? One of them has been in operation since the 19th century.
A bell ringing nonstop since 1840 and a tar drop falling once a decade: two stubborn experiments that have outlived the scientists who began them.
Who was the true inventor of the telephone? The controversy surrounding Graham Bell.
We credit Graham Bell with the telephone, but Meucci, Bourseul, and Reis got there first in a frantic race that Congress would rule on a century later.
Converting an old radio into a tube guitar amp (vacuum tubes)
Turn a forgotten vacuum-tube radio into a real guitar amp and chase that warm, coveted tube sound that costs guitarists a fortune to buy.
A 19th-Century Marketing Strategy: The Beautiful Collectible Cards of Liebig Meat Extract
A 19th-century marketing trick: how a meat extract turned a dreaded children's syrup into a craze with beautiful collectible art cards.
Our contextual reasoning doesn't always help
I couldn't recognize a familiar face at a distant airport for weeks, a true story revealing how much context shapes the way our brain reasons.
Electric vehicles, an invention that we forget, because of oil, but they have existed since the 19th century.
Electric cars aren't new: a 1927 guide reveals models from the 1890s with a 100-mile range, an invention oil made the world forget for a century.